


Buttercups

by BlueMoonHound



Series: Lucretia [7]
Category: The Adventure Zone (Podcast)
Genre: Angst, Canon Compliant Temporary Character Death, Dubious Consent, Hallucinations, Hurt/Comfort, Other, Poison, Psychological Torture, Torture, because belladonna, some sexual content
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-30
Updated: 2018-01-10
Packaged: 2019-02-22 17:45:49
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 8
Words: 16,929
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13172022
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BlueMoonHound/pseuds/BlueMoonHound
Summary: Belladonna - Erotic, euphoric, Fear-inducing, dangerous, toxic, and beautiful.Buttercups - an echo of a childhood. Here, they don't exist.Taako and Lucretia face very different troubles on this strange, selective plane.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This fic does feature poison and torture and things like hallucination and imprisonment so just a warning before you read it.  
> The first chapter doesn't contain any of this but it will appear in future chapters.  
> Don't worry, none of the main characters actively try to harm each other. This isn't that kind of fic.  
> ***please read the end of fic notes if you're worried about the tags/content implied by the tags. it's not a work like I usually write.***  
> on a lighter note, I'm [bluemoonhound](http://www.bluemoonhound.tumblr.com/) on tumblr if u wanna come chill! i post a lot of art on there  
> Chapter count is an estimate. Could end up being longer. There's less of a chance of it ending up being shorter, also this is going to be a series of 2 works so even when we reach chapter 8 there's gonna be more content for Buttercups. I just have a lot of words, ya kno?

Davenport is the captain. He mans the helm, runs the ship, gives orders, and keeps everyone under control. He does an amazing job, and provides useful support for the rest of the team.

Lup and Barry have taken on a team role of head scientist, working together to find and retrieve the light. Lup also helps with offence, alongside Magnus, who never hesitates to step in and do what needs to be done. Merle's a healer-- an essential, necessary component to the team.

Lucretia writes.

Taako cooks.

They both feel at odds with the new purpose of the mission. A bunch of scientists can live on gruel. None of them are incapable of writing down what they need, and they certainly don't need a lit major to do it.

 

“Hey! Hey, Stop! Gimme a sec, old man!”

Oh thank gods, the others are back. Taako stands a little straighter and checks the oven again. (The quiche is doing fine.) He pokes his head out of the kitchen to observe the commotion. Merle is fussing around Magnus, who has a bleeding gash running from his brow through his chin, barely missing his left eye. Taako notes how prone Magnus is to eye wounds. If they ever get out of this mess, he's gonna land himself some permanent scarring there.

Lup burnt her arms again. “Shit,” Taako mutters, walking into the room and folding his arms. “Luuuuuu,” he calls.

“Hey taakles? Shut your fuck! Shut it right now.” She leers at him.

The only member of the reconnaissance team who seems fine is Merle himself, who finishes stitching up Magnus's eye and starts cutting off his sleeve. There's an even deeper cut there. Taako rolls his eyes.

“You guys, are a grade A mess and a half,” he says. “No quiche till I hear what happened.”

“Just waiting on the captain,” Magnus says. “He'll be out soon, right?”

“I will,” Davenport says, entering the room with a stern expression on his face. “I trust you three weren't being _reckless_.”

“No, actually, we weren't,” Lup snarls, going to fold her arms across her chest and wincing when she touches the newly forming scars there. “Whoever these motherfuckers are? They're fucking nasty and I'm done.”

“Wow, lulu, language,” Taako says, but he's making his way across the room now, concerned. “D'ya want me to fetch your salve? I can get loverboy and lucy-lu while I'm down there.”

“Yeah, thanks,” Lup says, and Taako has a slight _oh, shit_ moment in his head as he turns down the hall, because there were basically no shenanigans in that interaction whatsoever.

Lucretia's door is closest. “Meeting!” he yells, and smiles at the startled noise she makes.

“I'll be right there,” Lucretia says after a moment.

“Cool, cool.” Taako heads to his room, fetches Lup's burn salve off the top shelf, and then makes his way towards the lab and engine area, the least convenient place to have a bedroom on the whole ship unless you're the head engineer.

“Baroldus B. Bluejeans! Get your ass out here it's debriefing time!” Taako calls through the door. He reaches for the handle (because it's Barry, lets be honest here, he might be asleep) but Barry squeaks and starts babbling.

“Wa-wait Taako I don't have my binder on hold on I'll be right out--”

“Barry I've seen you without a shirt before, chill your high horses. Put em on ice.” He respects the other man's privacy anyway because that's what good bros do.

Taako waits as Barry fumbles around in his room and opens his door wearing unzipped jeans and an unbuttoned button down. “So what's the fuss, then? I was going to do more research today.”

“This planet sucks balls, man, Lup's actually worried and Magnus got himself another eye scar,” Taako says. “Button up your goddamn clothes, jorts man.”

“Wow,” Barry says, zipping up his fly and working on the buttons on his shirt as they head down the hall. He spots the container of burn salve in Taako's hand and his frown deepens. By the time they make it to the living area, Barry's ruffled looking but presentable. Lup's sitting on the couch and Magnus's cuts have healed somewhat.

Taako plops himself down next to Lup, takes one of her arms, and begins rubbing the salve into the new burns.

“Now that we're all here,” Davenport says. “What exactly happened out there?”

“We just, we knocked on the door and they attacked us. We put down all our weapons and tried again but they still attacked us. We had to run for our lives.” Magnus shrugs.

“They said something about a permit. Like ya needa be from somewhere to get in or something? I dunno, but I don't think we're gonna have much luck in the upfront category on this world. Anyway, I didn't actively attack any of them, just gave the others more time...”

Barry stops tucking in his shirt long enough to shoot a worried glance at Lup. She feels his gaze. “I have some theories,” she grins.

Taako opts to take that moment to leave the room and check on the quiche. He may be _trained_ in science and wizardry, but that doesn't mean he _cares_ about it.

 

Taako lies on his back on the floor of his room, letting the cold of the deck ground him. It's dark, and it's late, and he's alone- Lup went to Barry's today, and he doesn't blame her. He kinda wants to talk to her, but he has a reputation to uphold-- can't go talking about deep darksies casually with anyone, could he?

He can't exactly go get smashed planetside, either-- this world is feudal, and the kings are vicious. To exist you have to have a permit and the seven of them certainly don't have permits. It's a miracle everyone who went on reconnaissance returned, especially Magnus, who had arrows in his back and a long cut running over his face like he'd gotten in a fight and then run away.

Taako breathes out his nose, and imagines a scenario where he can tell Lup how he's feeling.

 

 _“_ _Would you have left me?”_

_Lup's leaning against the metal wall of the ship and 'practicing' magic, bits of fire flicking up the edge of the wood she had snatched on the last world._

_“Planetside? If you were going to die, sure. I mean, you'd come right back next cycle.”_ Taako wants to believe she's lying, but this is just a brain!lup anyway. He's not even sure if a real!lup would say any of these things. He's known her his whole life, she's known him her whole life, and he still feels like he's _missing_ something.

 _“_ _No, I_ _mean, w_ _hat if you went on this mission without me?_ _Cha'boy's_ _just a chef. You've taken jobs without me before. I've taken jobs without you before._ _Yanno._ _”_

_The flame on Lup's stick flickers and dies._

_“Taako, we still have different jobs, you know,” Lup chuckles. “We've never decided to live in different places than each other.”_

_“_ _You know what I mean,” Taako says, waving a hand in the air. “What if I got got? You're a lot better and smarter than me at this adventuring b.s. and I, well, I was actually a little surprised they let us pull that package deal bullshit anyway.”_

_“Taako, you're a fucking awesome transmutation wizard. You're not flat out useless. Yeah, you use that shit to cook, but that doesn't make you useless. Besides. Gods. Imagine living on this goddamn ship for a month with nothing but rations. I would DIE.” Lup slides down the wall dramatically and pokes herself in the face with her stick, leaving a smudge of charcoal up her forehead. “That would be torture.”_

_Taako giggles. “Okay, okay.”_

It doesn't actually feel okay. It feels like bullshit. He feels like bullshit, lying on the floor of his bedroom, staring at the top bunk like he wants the will of the world to carry him to bed tonight. Imagining a hypothetical conversation with his _twin fucking sister_ that he'll never have the confidence to actually hold. He feels like bullshit, and for a moment he almost wishes that he was stuck in the hunger or wherever dead planes go with the rest of his society instead of lying on the floor of a ship in the sky of a world so unfamiliar that Magnus nearly lost his nose figuring out what it's like. He shakes the thought away.

He wouldn't leave Lup alone, right?

Would she leave him?

No. Of course not.

 

Lucretia sits on her bunk, flexing her right hand as she writes rapidly with her left-- she's getting tired, and she doesn't want to give herself carpel tunnel no matter the situation, in either hand. Besides, all in all her right hand has less practice writing than her left. That's why she learned how to fight with her right hand-- in the case of an attack, Lucretia could fight with her right and enemies would therefore target her right. And they would be so, so wrong, because her strength originates in her left hand.

Not that she'd ever end up fighting – Magnus and Lup were good at that, it was second nature to them. Even Taako is a better fighter than her. She finishes an entry, summarizing the flora of this world. She begins writing about the hierarchy, titling it “strict dystopic feudal caste system”.

Strict: No stranger is allowed in a kingdom. Magnus almost lost an eye. Lup has fresh burn scars on her arms, layered over the old ones. She needs to be less reckless with her magic.

Dystopic: There's evidence that a more advanced society once existed here, though Lucretia has little knowledge on how it fell apart. Compared to their homeworld, this place is definitely dystopic-- though, she supposes, it's a positive utopia compared to the hunger.

Feudal: A word that sums itself up – there's kings and peasants and hardly anyone in between.

Most of the leaders seem to be elven, which makes sense given their lifespan and cultural superiority as a result. Not all worlds they have landed on have featured that cultural superiority, but this one certainly does. The elves here, however, are quicker to anger and quicker to befriend. Lucretia wonders why, for a moment, before pressing her pen back to the paper and bothering to jot down the question.

Everyone in the group knows these things about this society. They were all debriefed when the reconnaissance mission came back. What possible use could this journal be to anyone? Why would anyone care to read about this world? Would they ever reach a point in their journey where a world would exist longer than a year, and anyone would have time to look at her work? Lucretia clicks her pen shut, closes her journal, and stares at it. Pointless, utterly pointless.

She falls back on her bed.

She's not a scientist, she's not a fighter, she's not even a leader. She's a writer and the humanities are utterly, utterly worthless in this situation. She understands why she ended up on this mission, the original plan had needed someone to chronicle the advances in understanding and science, but now? Here? She was pointless, useless, and frozen in the unending time loop.

Her only meaning was her memory. She was good at knowing things, even if she couldn't apply that knowledge with any expertise. In a last ditch effort, she'd probably always be on the ship, rather than planetside, and she could probably get the ship to safety if it was ever required. She's a backup plan if that's ever needed.

Not that it ever will be.

 

It's three A. M. when Lucretia stops trying to sleep and wanders towards the kitchen with her notebooks in tow. The heavy sickening weight of everything the team has been doing for the past twenty five years has started to keep her up more and more frequently, and eventually, it became her transcription time- when she could sit down at the kitchen table with all her stuff spread out, take up as much room as humanly possible, and write in peace. It's become a sort of routine. She figures if nothing else, she can write a bit of fantasy, try to get her mind off the matters at hand and relax a little.

Naturally, she's surprised to hear a soft hum coming from the kitchen. Something sizzling in a pan. She enters the room to find Taako, fully dressed, cooking some eggs. His ears are hanging a little lower than they normally do, but otherwise, he seems perfectly content. (She supposes the ear thing might be an appearance. Gods know with Taako, after all.)

She stops in the doorway and watches for a moment. One of those big elven ears flicks sideways, and both of them perk a little. He doesn't stop cooking, and if she were just a casual observer, she guesses that would have meant nothing to her.

“I see I've been spotted,” Lucretia said, stepping into the room. “What are you doing up so late?”

“What are _you_ doing up so late?” Taako flipped the eggs over in the pan.

“I'm always up this late. It's the writing hour.” Lucretia grinned and put her bag down on the table. “Though I assume I can't cover the _entire_ table with my bullshit today, not if you're in here.”

“Well I'd hate to impose, it is _your_ writing hour, but yeah, no, you can't do that, homie. Chaboy needs space.”

Lucretia chuckles, moving her bag to the floor and taking out a few notebooks. Maybe she'll just work one handed this time, then. Less space-consuming. She stops that thought. Space-consuming is a horrible thought to have, ever, and she opts to never think it again. In doing so, she gets it stuck in her head. Goddamnit, Hunger, whoever you are, you suck. You suck whole ass.

“So why are you up? I've established why I am. An eye for an eye, Taako.”

“I don't think this situation is quite up to eye standards,” Taako mutters. “Maybe ears. People take elf ears, right? And if ya gave up one of your tiny ass human ones it wouldn't prolly even throw off your balance, right? Would that even do _anything_? What do humans use their ears _for_? So many questions, Lucy, so many. Anyway, you know how it is, I was hungry. You know how it is.” He slides two perfectly cooked, over-medium eggs onto a plate and grinds some pepper onto them. He sits down across from Lucretia and promptly stuffs his mouth full of food, the ultimate solution to avoiding questions politely. Or maybe he was just trying to stop himself from rambling, after realizing he had started.

Lucretia hums and writes a little paragraph about her day in her personal notebook. Taako continues to eat his eggs. They look fucking delicious. Thirty full seconds pass in perfect quiet.

“Do you want to talk about it?” She knows there's something going on. Maybe he had a nightmare or something.

Taako deliberately mops up some spilled egg yolk with a piece of white speared on his fork. He worries at his lip with his teeth.

“You know, maybe I do. Ears are just, fascinating. So is food.”

Lucretia closes her notebook, putting her pen aside. She folds her hands. What could possibly be intense enough to not only wake Taako Taaco up in the middle of the night to make eggs, but also bother him enough to talk about it with someone who he didn't trust completely? _Because, let's be honest,_ Lucretia thought, _Taako doesn't trust a single soul but Lup._

“Well, uh, I guess it was about Lup? But that doesn't exactly explain it. You know. I can never get her right in my head. Do you do that? Do you imagine people ya like a lot in your head? Folks you care about?”

“Not particularly? I left most of those on homeworld. They're dead, now.”

“What's that like?”

“Well. It's fine, I guess. I'm tired, and I'm sad sometimes, because I'll never see them again. But I'm doing alright.” It's a bit of an overstatement: She'll survive.

Silence. A single drop of water falls from the sink every few seconds. Taako's ears slowly make their way back to the position they had been in before she entered the room. He's thinking negative thoughts.

He finishes his eggs.

“I'd be lying if I said I haven't considered staying before,” Lucretia says. “I'd be lying if I said I'd never wished for that. Even if I had died, at least I would have died with my family.”

He sits up. His ears leap to attention like unhappy soldiers.

“I… Well, Taako, if I'm going to be honest with you, I'm awfully tired. I feel so useless.”

Taako relaxes a little. “It is three in the morning.”

“You know what I mean.”

He chuckles. “Ya know, Lucy, We're exact opposites, you and me. You care about everyone else, and I care about myself.”

“I don't think that makes us opposites. I don't think it's entirely true, either. There's a difference between trusting someone and caring about them.”

“Stop being so high and mighty and technical, Lucy. D'you want some eggs?”

“I would love some eggs. Absolutely.”

Taako makes her eggs and goes back to bed, leaving the dishes in the sink.

Lucretia sits awake, considering the conversation. Her mind skips around, and lands on buttercups: a small yellow or white flower. A memory from her childhood. She doodles on a page of her notebook, drawing the face of a friend she hardly remembers, the miniature fake bows they used to make out of sticks and bittersweet vines. The arrows were sharp enough that one time, her friend got in trouble for having a weapon on school grounds. Lucretia was smart enough to know not to take hers to school after that.

Someone told her buttercups are poisonous. Lucretia wondered what they tasted like, but she never ate one. One day, when researching she found that they are toxic to livestock, an emetic. It said nothing about their toxicity to sapient races.

Davenport finds Lucretia asleep with her head on her notes that morning. On one page, she's drawn a buttercup.

There aren't any buttercups on this world.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Deffos kidnapping and hallucination in this chapter my friends

Davenport gathers the entire crew on deck a few days later. They'd gotten rather close to where they thought the light of creation might be, and he'd decided it was time for another reconnaissance mission. It needed to happen eventually. Regardless of the state of the world itself, regardless of whether it 'deserved' to be consumed, no one wanted the hunger to grow.

It was better not to give the hunger something to fight with.

“So of course I've decided to go, I trust the rest of you to get us off the planet if I die. I don't think we'll need more than three people on this trip.” Davenport crosses his arms.

To everyone's suprise, Taako and Lucretia both find themselves volunteering. Taako changes his mind when Magnus's hand goes up, and the team becomes Magnus, Davenport, Lucretia.  She glances at him, but his eyes are elsewhere, zoned on a wall. She gets the weird feeling she upset him. 

The light was in the hands of a rich elven king with about zero morals who locked his kingdom so tight that strangers died on sight, but the previous mission had pointed them towards an underground network of some sort-- Barry and Lup had spent a few days triangulating its specific location, and now it's time for them to give it a shot.

The cavern system under the city turns out to be a sewer, unsurprisingly-- it's a very short walk from the ship to their place of entry, an unused sewer entrance that had been left unattended. It's jagged around the edges, not clean and cut off but rimmed in rocks and grass. It looks more like the entrance to an animal's den than an actual sewer access. Lucretia wonders, as they climb into its dark maw, if it had been left that way because of a cave in, or on purpose to allow air into the sewer, or if it had been forgotten.

It doesn't seem like the sort of place someone would forget, but then again, people forget things all the time. Everyone but her seems to forget things, and she only doesn't because she writes them down.

The tunnel is long, dark, and cramped-- Davenport can stand just fine, but he's hardly 3 feet tall. He leads the trek, though, because it's easiest for him to maneuver. Lucretia watches his tail twitch, just visible around Magnus's enormous shoulders, when the rocks under his feet are unstable.

Eventually, the tunnel widens, and she and Magnus can finally stand up, though Magnus's hair is brushing the ceiling. There isn't any visible sign of a cave-in within range of Davenport's light spell. Lucretia is getting worried about this-- _was_ it forgotten? What do they do if this place is actually _watched_? Lucretia's getting a distinct _watching_ feeling from it, and it's making her even less comfortable. She knows she's not in these situations a lot, because she often stays behind with the ship rather than going out with the crew, so maybe she's wrong -- maybe she's _very_ wrong, but the feeling that she's right is bothering her. 

“Captain?”

“Yes?” Davenport glances at Lucretia.

“Are you sure this is safe? I have a bad feeling.”

“Of course this isn't safe,” he says, but he seems more cautious than he was before. Magnus, of course, rushes forward.

Lucretia casts a quick detect magic and finds the place is absolutely _crawling_ with spells. She has to turn it off before she gets dizzy. “This is decidedly _not_ safe,” she hisses. She takes a step back to steady herself.

Then the ceiling caves in.

Lucretia and Davenport spot an illusion and save, but Magnus, sweet, poor, non-magical Magnus, collapses to the ground. Her heart is hammering away in her chest, it's too dark in here, the shadows are just more pronounced by Davenport's light --  There's shouting down the tunnel.

As Lucretia leans a little forward to see who's coming, Davenport yells “We're getting out of here,” and turns back the way they came. He gestures to Lucretia for a moment, but she feels frozen in place. The world is dizzy and foggy around her, and it takes a minute for her to register, she should be following, she should go. She watches him give up and scuttle down the tunnel.

Several arrows breeze past Lucretia in the sudden darkness. It was Davenport's light spell that was keeping them illuminated. She turns to go after him, finally coming to her senses, when something hits her, hard, in the back of the head.

 

“Koooookooooo,” Lup says, waltzing into the living room. Her hands find their way to his shoulders, massaging along his perpetually-tense muscles. “Taakles. Bro. Baaabe.”

“What's the haps, lu?”

“Something's bothering you. What are you hiding from your dearest sister? What's the deets, bro, come on, fess up!” She vaults the couch and leans into Taako's side.

Taako closes Lucretia's journal. It was stupid to pretend to read the whole thing anyway-- he'd finished reading all the recipe entries earlier, and then went back to flip through the pictures. Maybe he could raid her room and snatch some more of them. What she said still rings in his mind – _I'll never see them again. But I'm doing alright._ He doesn't want to be thought of that way, he wants to believe Lup wouldn't feel that way, wouldn't move on so fast. _Lucretia's younger,_ he tells himself. _Elves form faster, longer, less forgettable relationships._

He feels like he's wrong.

“Come on, Taako! Tell me what's up.”

“S just been a long day, Lulu, and everyone's out and yanno.” He shrugs.

“Awh, are you worried about the nerd brigade?” Lup laughs. “Not that Magnus is a nerd, but, he's a nerd.”

“You're a nerd, you dingus.” he pokes her cheek.

“You're a bigger nerd than I am,” Lup says.

“Ekskeeeuseme?”

“Nerd.”

“Shut _uuup_!”

Taako's glad she hasn't seen through it, though. She often does, because they grew up so close together, but growing up close also means knowing what Lup expects Taako to act like. He enjoys the small bickering match that ensues, and puts his own purpose out of his mind.

 

She wakes up, if it could be called that. It's more like, she's dragged viciously through pain and into semiconsciousness, and becomes aware of some things. She whimpers, world foggy even with her eyes shut. 

Her wrists hurt. Her head throbs. Her neck is stiff, it aches. She's against a wall-- gravity pulls her head and feet down, so she can't be lying on a floor. She's cold. The wall is cold, probably stone or metal. No, it's stone-- she can feel the texture. Masonry. Not poorly built, either. She could make deductions about why that might be but, as she had observed, her head is throbbing. The pain and fog are reasonably hard to think through. 

Her mind wanders through fog for a moment.

The last thing she remembers is trying to join Davenport in his retreat down the cave hall. She hopes no one thinks he was being selfish. He wasn't. One more life is one more defense against the hunger. She was supposed to follow him. She froze in the middle of a dangerous situation, she should know better. She was supposed to leave, too. It's not his fault she's human and tall and distracted and unused to battle. 

She's incompetent.

Lucretia opens her eyes. It's blessedly dark and quiet in here, the only sound the _tink! Tink!_ Of water hitting ceramic. She tries to move an arm and realizes the reason they hurt so much is because her wrists are shackled, and all her weight is on them. She takes stock of her injuries. One of her shoulders aches terribly, like it had been dislocated and then popped back into place. Her head hurts. She figures it might even fall into minor concussion territory. When she has the energy and presence of mind, she looks up at her wrists. A little trickle of blood has run all the way to her elbow, and dried there.

It doesn't look like she could get out of these shackles, either. They look tight. She's against a wall, but, as she experiments, she discovers her legs still function without too much pain. She pushes herself up along the wall and to her surprise manages to slide her bloody wrist out of its shackle. She decides she was wrong about them being too tight. She makes a noise of discomfort when all her weight shifts to the other wrist, and reaches towards it, grabbing on so she's facing the wall.

She works her wrist out of the shackle and falls to the floor, which is a full six feet below her. She doesn't bother moving any more than that for a moment, because it feels like more effort than it's worth. Her neck hurts more now that she's moved it in the wrong position and hitting the ground jostled her head, sending flickers of pain through her skull. Her arm continues to throb mercilessly. 

She's tired.

After a few minutes of laying on a cold, damp floor, Lucretia forces herself to sit up. She was right about the walls-- dungeon walls. The floors are dirt. It's the dungeon of a fairly sturdy castle, she figures, because where else would they take an intruder that would be so well built? She's definitely not an esteemed guest. The shackles she had fallen from look a little rusty from this distance. She hopes she won't get tetanus.

There's a small, chipped sink in the corner, the source of the dripping noise. Shackles line the wall, and a few of them contain unconscious humanoid forms, not all of them human. There's a single, small door on one wall, which she guesses is locked.

Information gathered, Lucretia lies back down in a more comfortable position and lets her mind drift.

 

Davenport is tense – Barry reads it in his shoulders and the way he holds himself at the door of the ship. He's visibly pulled taught around some negative emotion, like a rope fraying from too much pressure. Barry puts down his notes and stands. He spies the arrow in his captain's left shoulder. _Oh shit_.

Whatever had happened, it wasn't good.

“Get the others,” Davenport says, and Barry is up in an instant, rushing from the room. He grabs the twins and Merle and hurries back.

When Merle enters the room, the atmosphere changes a little-- he rushes right over to Davenport and starts fiddling with the arrow in his shoulder. “Shit, Dav, you couldn't have dodged this?”

“I was in a hurry,” Davenport quips, flinching, presumably from pain. There's something regretful about how he says it, like he'd made a snap decision and he's not sure it was the right one. “The others are gone.” He looks Taako, then Barry, then Lup in the eyes, watching for something.

“They're dead?” Barry asks. He shifts a little in his seat and Lup puts an arm around him.

“I don't know,” Davenport says. “They could have been kidnapped. Magnus was caught in an illusion and Lucretia didn't follow me. It might be because I'm small, though, she can't run upright in that tunnel.” He shrugs with his uninjured shoulder and winces. “We're not going to use that route to get into this town, that's for sure.”

Barry looks disappointed. “Wait, were they waiting for you?”

“Some sort of magical. Someth- OW!,” Davenport says, as Merle removes the head of the arrow from his shoulder. “Merle, couldn't we do that sometime _later_?” He hisses.

“Nope,” Merle says.

Davenport huffs, rubbing at his eyes with shaking hands. “I – maybe we should just give up on this godsforsaken planet. The inhabitants are, well, It's more work than it's worth.”  
Merle closes up the hole in his back, but Davenport doesn't stop shaking. In fact, the relaxing feeling that usually comes with healing doesn't seem to effect him at all. He looks around the room like he's confused, and then takes a step back, bumping into Merle.

“Davenport?” Merle asks, putting a hand on his shoulder. Davenport jumps and swings around,

fear creeping onto his face. He looks at Merle like he can't see him and backs away again, this time running into the coffee table. Lup stands up, looking concerned.

Davenport turns again, one hand on the coffee table, and shrieks. It's a terrifying sound, a sound they haven't heard Davenport make in the twenty six odd years they've known him. His tail twitches like an angry cat's and he stumbles backwards again, his fingers carving into his eye sockets.

Merle picks the arrow up off the floor, looks at it, looks at Davenport, and then reaches out again and mutters another spell.

Nothing immediate changes, except maybe the tremors running through Davenport's body slow up a little. He moans. Merle grabs him around the waist and holds him, struggling to keep him still.

Merle turns to the wizards. “He needs to _sleep_ this one off.”

“Oh,” says Taako, his voice a few pitches too high, and then he reaches out a hand and Davenport falls still in Merle's arms. “What – What _was_ that?”

“Banewort,” Merle grumbles.

“Oh,” Says Lup. She turns to Taako. “Belladonna.”

“Deadly _nightshade_??” Barry says, almost simultaneously. “Who puts deadly nightshade on _arrowheads_??”

“These bastards, apparently,” Merle says. He stomps out of the room.

The bloody arrow stays on the table.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> warning: torture.

_The forest is dappled with soft light-- Lucretia nearly falls into the river, twice, on her way across the log. Emelie holds up a small yellow flower when she gets across._

_“Look what I found!”_

_Lucretia looks. It's a pretty yellow flower. She's nonplussed._

_“Buttercups?” Emelie enunciates. “You know. Good luck!” She puts the flower under her chin, which glows._

_“Good luck?” Lucretia asks. “Why?”_

_“It's good luck if it glows, silly,” Emelie laughs. Lucretia forces her mouth into a tight line and crouches down in front of the flowers. She fights off the sudden urge to eat one._

 

Lucretia stares at the nightshade berry in front of her. “I'm sorry?”

“Food,” grunts the guard again. They leave. Lucretia stares at the small purple berry, and then lets her eyes wander around the room. Some of the prisoners have actual food. Some of them have berries. Some of them have more berries than she has. Lucretia looks at the belladonna in her hand again. She faintly recalls reading a few tomes on belladonna poisoning back in her authorly days, but exactly what those books contained is a little beyond her right now, sitting on a floor, having not eaten anything or drunk much in an indeterminate number of hours.

“You have to eat it,” says the prisoner next to her. She looks over. He has a bowl of food. “You have to eat it, and you'll keep getting those in higher doses till you tell them what they want to know.”

“I did tell them,” Lucretia says. She'd told the truth, for what it was worth. _I'm an interplanar traveler trying to save your planet from a vast hunger the size of the entire system_ doesn't usually read as the truth. “I told them. So why do I have a berry?”

“Prolly didn't tell em what they wanted to hear,” He shoves a spoonful of pottage into his mouth.

“What do they do if I _don't_ eat it?” Lucretia asks.

“They whip you,” He shrugs. “But it's not so bad, till they up your dose. Couple of those can be euphoric. Too many and you start getting demons.”

“And then you die,” Lucretia says.

“Yea, usually around the eight-berry mark 'cause if you get that far you haven't eaten in sixteen days. Well. Depends on race, too. Humans die sooner sometimes.” He eyes Lucretia up for a moment, raises an eyebrow, and then goes back to his food.

She's not underweight or unhealthy, so-- sixteen days. Maybe if she puts up with torture for a little while, she can give the others more time. It might not help, but there's not much _worse_ that these motherfuckers can do than she's already faced.

She wonders if these chucklefucks give their prisoners water.

She crushes the berry under her shoe and leans back against the wall, resolute. No one takes her away, and she finds that the only thing she has to deal with is hunger.

The next day, however, they do notice.

“Hey! You! You with the white hair!” Lucretia jumps a little, and looks up.

“Yes?” (forced calm, Lucretia. You have this in the bag.)

“You're coming with me,” The guard says, wrapping a large hand around Lucretia's wrist and yanking her to her feet. She stumbles after him, whiting out from the sudden movement, as he drags her into a plain stone room and leaves her there. She hears the door lock behind him and sits on the floor, unwilling to expend extra energy standing. Her heart is hammering. It sucks. It sucks ass and balls and Lucretia very firmly does not want to be stuck in this situation but _you know what Lucy shut the fuck up and deal with it._

Her mind voice sounds like Taako just long enough for her to be unnerved.

When he comes back, though, Lucretia _is_ forced to stand. He shoves her head against the wall and hits her thighs with something sharp – she recognizes the sound of the whip. Lucretia thinks through the pain, calculates the exact size and shape of the whip she can't quite turn around to see behind her. He lets go after an indeterminate amount of time and leaves, locking the door again behind him.

Lucretia lies on the ground for a few minutes, letting her body get used to the pain and shock, before standing up and exploring the room. A small, high, barred window. It reaches to ground level, and she can see grass and a tree outside. She reaches an arm through the bars and manages to snag a stick.

 _I could write_ , she considers. The walls are fairly pale. All she needs is ink of some kind.

She puts a hand against the wall and realizes that hand was bloody. It leaves a clear mark on the surface of the wall.

Well, that works.

Lucretia chews at the tip of the stick till the fibers separate enough for her to use it as a rudimentary paintbrush, and sticks it right on her lower thigh, rolling it around till it's suitably covered in blood. She winces at the pain at first, but it's mostly numb by now, which she recognizes as something of a bad sign. It doesn't matter.

She begins her first entry.

_Day 1. I didn't eat the belladonna they gave me. They didn't notice._

_Day 2. I didn't eat the belladonna. They took me to a room and whipped the back of my legs for a while and left me there. I suppose solitary confinement is a part of this punishment._

_Day 3._

She stops there, because she doesn't know what will happen on day 3. Lucretia rips her robe into strips and bandages her thighs as best she can. (It's not clean, but it'll prevent the wounds from getting any dirtier, and maybe provide some pressure to stop the bleeding.) Then she lies down on the bloody, dirty floor and goes to sleep.

 

Davenport wakes up feeling tired, which tells him that at some point the previous day he was injured. He never wakes up tired when the situation is under control. The issue is, he can't seem to recall what happened the other day. He lies on his bed for a few minutes, going over what he _can_ remember – He was shot, he got back to the ship(?) and then, ...fear?

He definitely made it back to the ship, but whether this happened before or after the events he remembers is in the air. 

He sits up, rubbing his aching temples, and recognizes that he hasn't been changed out of his clothes from the other day. Someone took off his shirt, thankfully, so there's no blood on his sheets. The past few times he's had to replace his sheets he's had to wait a few cycles for a plane that has both civilization and gnomes, _because apparently gnomes are uncommon for some reason_ , which makes him salty.

He does, through a hazy wall of dark fog, recall Merle healing him. He knows at least Merle was in the room when his memory cut short. Climbing out of bed and pulling on a new outfit, Davenport makes his way to Merle's room.

He knocks at Merle's door. After a bit of shuffling, some mumbled complaints, Merle opens it. Merle peers at him groggily, so Davenport figures it must be rather early in the morning. He hadn't thought to check. After a moment, though, Merle perks up a little. “Look who's awake,” he says. “How're ya feelin?”

“Tired,” Davenport says.

“A lot better than it could be,” Merle says, seemingly satisfied.

“What happened last night, Merle? I can't recall a lot.”

“The arrow was coated in Banewort.”

Davenport raises an eyebrow. Who uses dway berries as arrowhead poison? He faintly recalls something in military history vaguely referencing the use of _Atropa Belladonna_ on weaponry but it's rather foggy.

Merle shrugs. “Iunno, captain man. Just something to watch out for. Banewort's not something to mess with.”

“I figured.” He can only recall a little of the feeling it had given him but whatever it was came very close to pure terror.

The ship seems in order. Taako is asleep in Lup's lap, Barry's messing with the engine, Merle went back to sleep. Lucretia and Magnus aren't here, but it's not like they haven't lost one or both of them to a plane before. (Never this early, at least for Lucretia. But they have no proof that she's dead.)

Eventually, Davenport opts to go back to sleep as well. He's still tired.

 

Taako wakes up alone on the couch. It's chilly, especially when he rolls _off_ the couch and lands his ass on the cold metal floor. He grumbles to himself, pushing onto his feet and making his way back to his bedroom. He has plans.

First off, it's bothered Taako more than he'd like to admit that Magnus and Lucretia didn't make it out of that cave. He can't exactly interrogate Davenport about it, because Davenport would tell him they'd be back next cycle and there's nothing they can do and blah blah blah captainly junk can't lose another crewmate what the fuck ever. He can't interrogate _Lucretia_ about it, the second best option because she hears all the infos, because well, obviously she's not here. So he goes with option number three, and option number three lives in a cold corner of the ship all by his lonely bluejeans-covered ass.

_It's colder than the fucking ice box down here._

Barry pulls another panicked moment over presentation when Taako goes to open his door, but this time Taako doesn't wait for Barry to pull himself together because he's just here to talk. “Barry, we're not going anywhere, just put on a t-shirt and sit down,” Taako drawls.

“Okay, so, what do ya wanna talk about then?” Barry just re-ties up his bathrobe and plops himself down in his desk chair, leaving Taako to scramble onto his ridiculously elevated bed.

“I need to know what happened to them down there, yanno? It'll give us an advantage if we know.”

“Why didn't you just ask the captain, he was there--”

Taako puts a finger on Barry's lips. “Nope, no, Davvy's on break, Taako's gonna go down there all by himself and see what's up. But I wanted someone to know, yanno? I'm gonna see whats up. I'm like, the head magician around here, right?” Taako leans back, casual, legs folded.

“No, Lup is,” Barry says, and then realizes it was the wrong thing to say.

“Psssh, lies, we're _identical_ ,” Taako says, but he can't stop his ears from falling a little, a little discomfort working his way onto his face. “Chaboy can handle this.”

“I-if you say so,” Barry says. “What do you need me for, then?”

“You are a useful motherfucker, Barry,” Taako says. “Do you gots me any weapons I could bring with? You are a fighter, right? That wasn't just a homeworld rumor?”

“Yes, I'm a fighter, I don't see-- What do you need weapons for? You're a wizard.”

“You're a wizard too, and yet, look at you, double majoring or whatever.” Taako gestures to Barry's whole form- muscular and a little chubby, though by the end of many cycles his beef has diminished a little from lack of exercise. “Fightin' boy.”

“Well, I – I think a shield might be more useful,” Barry stands, pulling a smallish shield out from behind his bed. “It's uh, it might be a little heavy for you.”

Taako manages to lift the shield without dying which he votes is a success. It'd be hard to hold it on one arm, though. He's not the strongest. “I can work with this,” he says.

“Anything else?” Barry cringes as Taako inexpertly swings the shield over his back.

“Nah, homie, I think I'm good. Might want something when I get back but I'm chill, now. Catcha later,” he blows a kiss on his way out the door, leaving Barry to look a little embarrassed as he sets off down the hallway.

 

The tunnel is a little way out from the field where the Starblaster is parked. It was deemed a safe distance away from both the ship itself and the city it leads to. Taako opted to steal a pair of Lup's jeans, which are a little too wide at the hip but much more practical than his usual outfits. He's also donned a shirt reading “NRDBOI” which Lup had bought or maybe stolen on one of the more friendly planes and forced into his presence. He'd have to give it to Barry at some point. Or maybe Merle. They're both nerds. Life nerds. Nerds who nerd over life too much.

He slides into the tunnel and realizes immediately why Davenport managed to escape and Lucretia didn't-- Well, he did mention it, but the tunnel Taako crawls into is barely three and a half feet tall. Neither Magnus not Lucretia are small humans.

Taako, however, has a huge advantage on the human members of the crew-- Dark vision. He thinks gnomes have it too, so he's not entirely sure why Davenport didn't just cast Light on something Magnus or Lucretia were carrying, but he's not one to judge hasty decisions considering where he's at right now. He slides a little farther forward, and the tunnel opens out just like Davenport described.

The first thing he does, before even getting up from his kneeling position, is cast wall of force at the far entrance, blocking anyone who was waiting from leaving the area. Then he looks around.

He doesn't have to do much looking.

Magnus's dead body is gathering flies in the middle of the room.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> a sort of calm before the storm kind of chapter. Shortish.

“Are you going to tell us who you are?”

Lucretia takes a deep breath and spills the whole truth again. “I'm – I'm Lucretia. I'm from Westshire, the middle continent, though I'm sure the other continents don't call it the middle continent-- I never did know what was up with that – I'm one of seven interplanar explorers working for the Institute of Planar Research and Exploration. I'm the chronicler. I write things down. It was only supposed to be a two month expedition but then the hunger came and ate the world. I just want to go back to my ship, That's all. That's it.”

“That's a lot of lies you just said through a zone of truth, wise girl,” the elf laughs. He turns to the guard. “You know the drill. If she doesn't eat her belladonna, whip her.”

Lucretia opts not to eat her belladonna.

“Okay, strip,” says the guard, looking bored when he comes back.

“What?” Lucretia folds her arms. “You can torture me with my clothes _on_ , thank you.”

“Nope, it's better if you're naked, take 'em off.”

“What if I don't want this to be about your amusement?”

“Well, too bad,” he returns, cracking the whip on the floor. “I'll give you this – you don't have to take off your makeshift bandages. Don't plan on hitting your legs today anyway.”

“What happens if I refuse?”

“Got a buncha whipped up clothes?” The guard shrugs.

Lucretia frowns – the bandages go on over her pants. So, not removing her pants? Okay. She takes off her robe. Her shirt. Removes her bra. Her shoes. The man with the whip sighs and kicks her clothing aside, cracking the whip against the floor again. “Yeah, that's good enough.”

When the pain hits, this time, Lucretia is numb to it. She feels the whip connect with her back, knows, logically, that it's there, that it hurts, but doesn't fully acknowledge that. The world is five feet away and misty like the moonlight outside the little barred window. She feels the wind on her face. Smack. It hurts, she's sure it must hurt, but she just sucks in another breath and waits for it to be over.

She doesn't realize her legs were moments from collapsing till the guard leaves the room and she does collapse, splayed across the floor, bleeding from her back. She lies there for a few minutes or maybe an hour or two or maybe a whole day because what's the point of bandaging wounds you can't even feel? She has no idea where she's been hit and it stings more than actual pain could.

When she has the energy to sit up, to reach for her robe to make new bandages, she moves and her whole back flares up in pain. Well, there's her answer. There's a distinct advantage to having her clothes whole and unbloodied, too, she realizes. Maybe the guard didn't mean that bad.

She grabs the stick she's been using for a brush, dips it in the pool of blood on the floor (a little woozy, blood loss, that's a frightening amount– never mind, who cares– She's hungry–) and writes her entry.

_Day 3. I'll eat the goddamn belladonna tomorrow._

Lucretia puts her stick down, wishing for the reassuring feeling of slamming a notebook closed, and then rolls over and goes to sleep.

 

Taako checks for a pulse. None. Breathing. None. It's a rather stupid list of things to check off, considering there's an arrow lodged right through Magnus's chest, but Taako has to believe-- just for a moment, has to humor his own fear of being completely and utterly alone, before he slides his hands under the corpse's armpits and drags it back the way he came.

It's a lot harder to climb through the tiny tunnel when he's dragging a dead body. Taako crouches low and works his way backwards, pausing with a huff when he reaches the vertical stretch. He casts levitate on Magnus's body and yanks it up after him.

Taako hears yelling in the cave and breaks into a run across the plane, Magnus still floating behind him. He leaves Magnus at the base of the ship and scrambles to get through the door. For a moment he sits, silent, his back to the door and his heart hammering, listening.

The ship is, thankfully, not visible from the exit to the cave.

He lets out a long, exhausted breath after a good ten minutes of silence and lets his head fall forward on his knees, wilting.

Light footsteps down the hall. Taako looks up.

Davenport folds his arms, taps his foot, raises one eyebrow. Taako takes in these actions separately, feeling a little disconnected.

“Magnus is dead,” he says.

Davenport looks anywhere but his eyes, his expression immediately losing its effect. Silence fills the hallway like a terrible ringing in Taako's ears, and he can hear his breath, short and light. He can hear a shuffling somewhere else on the ship. He can hear Lup murmuring to herself.

“You're lucky it wasn't you,” Davenport says.

Taako shrugs. “Y'all'd get along fine without me,” he says.

“Taako, that attitude is inappropriate,” Davenport sighs. “Are you alright?”

“Fine, homie,” Taako quips, pushing himself off the floor and leaving the room. Fuck that noise.

“Find anything?” Barry asks as Taako heads towards the kitchen.

“Magnus's body is outside,” Taako says. “Don't do anything weird, you weirdo, he's our fuckin' friend.”

“No, of course not,” he responds, sounding distracted as he heads towards his room.

Taako sighs and starts making macaroons.

 

She crushes the berry in her teeth. It pops in her mouth.

It's not particularly flavorful, Lucretia notes. A little sweet.

Lucretia swallows. There's a bit of an aftertaste to the berries. She would have really liked a glass of water, she's parched. It's been how many days?

She gets up and walks towards the door, feeling lightheaded, and knocks on it.

“Shut up!”

“Can I have some water?” she rasps.

The door creaks open and someone shoves a pitcher in. It takes all of Lucretia's strength of will not to pick it up and down the whole thing right then and there. She forces herself to take little sips.

After about half an hour she notices the effects of the belladonna. It's not particularly intense at this low a dosage. Her vision is awfully blurry, though, and it's not fun. The light in the room, however wan, is too intense. She closes her eyes to keep herself from getting a headache.

 _Pupil dilation_ , her brain tells her. _Atropine found in belladonna causes pupil dilation. It was once used for beauty._

She's not sure from what sweet hell it fetches this information, but she's read so many random scientific texts in her past for biographical and recreational purposes that she doesn't question it.

A pang of loneliness wells up inside her, and she takes another sip of water. The mood slides under her skin and lingers there, bringing her close to tears. She could let herself cry, she realizes, as she's alone in this room and no one around seems to give a damn about her emotions in the first place, but just the knowledge that anyone is within hearing range makes her uncomfortable with the idea. Instead, she closes her eyes and imagines someone holding her. Lup, or Taako, or Barry maybe. Taako's hands in her hair. She imagines sitting in the kitchen, feeling woozy and sick and hungry just like she does now, but Taako's there and he makes her eggs and forces her to eat them slowly so she won't get sick. He holds her and rocks her in his arms while she cries.

Eventually, she falls asleep.

 

Barry digs Magnus's grave. He is, after all, the remaining fighter.

There's something simultaneously sickening and enticing about Barold Bluejeans, shirtless and in a sports bra, digging his friend's grave. He becomes so intent when he's digging, as a man who is obsessed with death might, but there's a solemnity to him as his shovel hits the bottom of the ditch again and again. Taako sits down on one edge, near the ladder, and watches, ears low. It's been a long time since the two of them were alone together.

The silence is heavy and respectful.

Taako observes the thick musculature of Barry's shoulders as they heave another shovel full of dirt out of the ground. He itches to reach down and touch them, feel them move.

“Do you think he'd mind if I took his blood and hair as samples?” Barry asks, leaning on his shovel for a moment.

“Who?” Taako says, distracted. There's a little bead of sweat moving down past Barry's ear. He wants to lick it away.

“Magnus.”

“Didn't you take some of his cum as a sample once?”

Barry starts, embarrassment gracing his face. It's adorable. “Wh- Who- how do you know about that?”

Taako shrugs. “Lup told me. But real talk, jeansboy, Maggie's not gonna care about that shit. I bet he'd give his blood to any old weirdo. Probably for money if they're not a friend, though. But yanno. You two are at _least_ friends.”

“Sh-shut up, it's been years since w-we were a thing.” He stammers when he's embarrassed. Even cuter. Taako allows himself a little smile.

“It's okay, homebro, your secrets are safe with the ol' Taako.”

“I don't think that's true, but I can't stop you from knowing them if you already, well, know them.” Barry starts digging again. His abdominal muscles clench as he hefts a rock out of his way. Taako feels slightly buzzed.

“Are you just gonna sit there, or are you gonna help?”

“I'm just gonna sit here,” Taako grins. “I like watching you.”

Barry grumbles but doesn't argue. “At least you're honest.”

“Hell yeah I am.”

Barry put his shirt back on before grabbing Magnus's body. It wasn't much of a ceremony, anymore. Just a little respect for a friend. Taako cast feather fall before Barry dropped it into the grave.

He started shoveling again. It was fine. He was fine.

Taako grabs a shovel.

“What --” Barry stares at Taako, who makes a show of removing his shirt. He throws it across the grave to the side with clean grass and sticks the shovel in the pile of dirt. Might as well make his useless ass a little less useless.

He lets the warm feeling in his chest expand a little when Barry sizes him up. He's wearing just a miniskirt and thigh highs, the edges of a garter poking out of the top. He likes it when cute people look at him, even if their expressions are incredulous.

“Are ya gonna help?” he raises an eyebrow at Barry, straining as he hefts another shovel full of dirt onto Magnus's body.

“Actually, no,” Barry decides.

Taako grumbles.

 


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> -hallucinations happen lots in this one

Lucretia is handed four berries with a pitcher of water. She eats them one at a time, sitting in the corner of her little dungeon room. The guard left the door open this time and they're watching her.

It took a few days for Lucretia to realize how much they taste like a white wine. Now, she can imagine she's sitting in her room, sipping something bitter and a touch sweet, and that it's not going to make her eyes do strange things or black tendrils play at the edge of her vision in a few hours. They do make her mouth dry, much like wine, which helps the illusion as she pours herself a glass. The water tastes like belladonna for a few sips before she washes the rest of the juice down her throat.

 _It's just four berries, though_.

The guard closes the door when she's swallowed them all, but her anxiety doesn't leave with them. Once again she wants to curl up on the ground and cry. She wants to be with her friends and family, curled up on the couch with Taako and Barry and Magnus and drinking _actual_ wine, maybe.

Taako, braiding her hair. She can almost feel his fingers working their way through her curls, and she relaxes against the wall. Cool fingers, running down her shoulders. She lets out a long sigh, legs falling open. Taako walks away, saying something she can't quite hear, back towards the kitchen. Into the wall. Right. She's in a cell.

Barry's sitting on her bed and reading a notebook she wrote, her own notebook, his legs swinging. He'd just picked up her notebook and decided to read it and that made her so euphoric, somebody cares, someone loves her work. And she sinks into the wall, cool wall of the ship, and grins at him when he points out a little spelling mistake. He's wearing sweatpants. They're Magnus's and they're 10 sizes too big.

She relaxes again when soft hands reach for her waist, gentle touches running up and down her body. Lup's tongue along her jawline. Gods, she loves the crew, she loves them all so much. Her thoughts swell with peace and happiness, a warmth settles in her gut. Cool lips settle against her lips, cool fingers, Lup's this time, running up her thighs, making her jolt. Fingers against her stomach. Hair against her face. The warmth in her belly intensifies, turning into an itch, but she's too heavy and warm and comfortable to do anything about it. Her lips are dry, her mouth is dry, but she doesn't want to let go of her fantasy.

 _It is a fantasy, right? Is Lup actually here, her hands on my waist?_ She moans as the sensation of those touches rolls down her arms, across her torso, under her blouse. The ache in her head and her back is almost gone, almost forgotten.

She can feel emotion run under her skin in torrents now, making her feel bright and a little teary. She wants with an intensity she didn't expect to ever feel and needs with a pleasure that only grows with the pressure just inside her body. The world is blurry, except for Lup, strong and good and right there in front of her, wearing Lucretia's blue shirt and Barry's jeans, grinning in a way only Lup does. And Lucretia wants more of that. She wants and she wants and she _wants_.

She leans forward, looking for Lup's face, and whimpers when there's no returning pressure, no shoulder to lean on. Tears leak down her face, running rivulets into her skin, which burns with an intensity she suddenly hates. Lucretia pushes her body to the floor, grounding herself in the now, in her aloneness. The hunger dances in the edges of her vision, and she tries to push it away, but it consumes her.

Oh well.

That's alright.

 

_“No, no, come on it's more like – Like this. Yanno? You know the chemical makeup of the average flower, I said that five minutes ago--” Taako leans back over Lucretia and puts his hands over hers, and she tries again. Cellulose. Vacuoles, chlorophyll – Another sprout._

_She's been having trouble making a flower that isn't green, despite the number of times Taako described the chemical makeup to her. Transmutation just isn't her focus._

_“Merle's far better at this,” she grumbles, plucking the newly sprouted green flower from the loaf of bread and dropping it into the box next to her. Taako swings his leg up onto the back of the couch behind her and she lets her head fall against it. “Why did you decide I should learn this anyway?”_

_“The more the merrier!” Taako exclaims, his whole face lit with a grin. “Besides, it's fun ta watch ya struggle. Try again. Picture the protocaynin. Let the flavones be one with your soul.”_

_“Shut up, Taako. You sound odd when you let science come out of your trash hole.”_

_“Well it's a good thing I don't got a trash hole then!”_

_Lucretia leans back forward, hands back on the loaf of bread, and channels her energy. Flower. Flower. This time, when she opens her eyes, she's produced a fully formed buttercup._

_“Yesssss,” Taako leaps off the couch. “I mean, obvi it's gonna be missing some internal shit like, aren't buttercups toxic or something? But. Hell yeah!!!”_

_“I don't know,” Lucretia says, but she puts the buttercup behind her ear and feels confident about it the whole day. (Everybody asks. Strange excitement bubbles through her as she tells them what she's made.)_

 

_Taako's packing Lup's bags for her. Well, kind of. Mostly, he's making sure Lup doesn't take all the best and fanciest clothes with her when she goes on a fancy special sciencey mission in space all by her lonesome and without him, because that would be a crime against the elven race. He folds another pair of ripped and burnt jeans he found, nestles them into her suitcase._

_Sneaks in a bottle of vodka, because fuck yes, be the enabler. Zips up the suitcase, neatly packed, and rolls that motherfucker to the wall. He needs a little vodka himself. Taako takes the open bottle off the shelf and knocks back a shot of pure flavorless bullshit. It burns on the way down. Lovely._

_He's standing at the door, Lup's suitcase in his hand again. She hugs him tight. She's warm, reassuring, full of life. He can hear her heart beat under her skin. The moment stretches like an hour, like a year, as they stand there, intertwined. She's not returning, not soon. Two whole months. Taako feels hollow at the thought of being without Lup for two months, but he doesn't let himself cry. It'll be fine, he'll be fine. This will be fine._

 _“I'll be back, Bro. Good luck with your gig.” and a kiss on the cheek. And she's gone._

_Something's wrong. Something's very wrong. The clouds overhead don't swirl, they're still. It feels familiar. All at once, he remembers the hunger. "Lup!" he calls, running from the door. She's gone, she's gone, he can't catch her and the hunger is here, it's coming. He keeps running. His heart quickens, overtaking his body and dragging him towards the ground. She's gone. Taako reaches out, but the ground is too fast for him and she's moved on, Taako, and now you can die with the rest of your world--_

_Pillars of darkness are descending. Taako gets up, he runs again, but not for long before he's seized at every side, overtaken. Blood runs down his shirt. Lup's gone. She's gone, she's gone, she's gone, she's never coming back –_

 

“Koko! Wake up, holy shit!” Lup. She's right there- and-- she's got her arms around him and-- he can smell the distinct flavor of her perfume and the laundry detergent she uses mixed together into her shirt. Taako shudders, grounded, and wraps his arms around his sister's warm torso.

“Bad dream.”

“No, shit, Ko, more like night terror? You were _screaming_.” Her fingers are in his hair, his hair is probably tangled, was he thrashing around? Has he hurt her? Taako wants to be very far away but he doesn't want to let go of Lup, not ever. He sinks his face into her belly and tries not to focus on what he was dreaming about, even as it loops in his mind like a broken record.

It's so much worse now that he knows what it's like to die at the hands of the hunger. It's so much worse now that he's had his heart removed by a pillar of black opaline crystal, from the inside out, blood pooling into the dirt at his feet. He remembers scrabbling at his chest in a fruitless attempt to release himself from the hold the hunger had on him. His fingers were reddened with blood, his eyes spotted with pain as he gasped in an attempt to fill crushed lungs. And it didn't help that the whole time, Lup was screaming his name, that he was still shaking with fear when he was re-knit on the starblaster.

“Taako!”

“Mgngph.” He's dragged violently back into the present by the insistent tone of Lup's voice.

“Come on, Koko, you totally just zoned on me again. Do you want hot cocoa?”

Taako nods against her shirt.

She slides her arm under his knees and Taako starts to protest, but she shushes him. “Nope, I'm not gonna let ya walk down there. Barry's there, you two can be nerds while I make cocoa.”

This doesn't make Taako happier about Lup carrying him down the halls of the Starblaster and dropping him on the couch, but it makes him a little less antsy. He won't be alone while she makes cocoa, not that he necessarily would anyway, since there's a table in the kitchen, but the couch is nicer.

It turns out to be a little awkward, because Taako recalls flirting ruthlessly with Barry the other day, and nearly tearing a muscle or something trying to bury Magnus all by himself. He sits on the far side of the couch and doesn't look at Barry.

“How's the shoulder?” Barry's reading a magazine with sexy… gnomes?? on the cover. Every time Taako interacts with Barry the man gets stranger.

“Shut up.” It hurts. He didn't actually sprain it or anything, he's just not used to physical exertion.

Barry quirks an eyebrow and turns a page of his gnome playboy or whatever the fuck he's reading. Taako decides not to ask. It would either grant him information he didn't want or a flustered and uncomfortable Barry, which is fun sometimes, but right now he doesn't want to think about anything, let alone touching Barry's absolutely delicious arms.

Lup returns with hot chocolate and plants herself firmly in between them. Taako sips his cocoa and tenses for her bullshit. Which does, in fact, smack him in the face moments later.

“So why exactly are you so uncomfortable and scared, Taakles?”

Yep. There it is.

 

There's a man in the room.

There's a whisp of a figure in the back of her vision, a man standing just in the corner of her eye. When she looks away for a moment, he's there, his fingers on her throat, against her face, under her skin, peeling back layers to her bones, making her cry out in pain and confusion. So she watches him, shaking in the corner of her tiny cell, waiting for him to come at her, to weigh her down with lead weights and suck the blood out of her neck.

There are fingers against her skin like steel nails, digging into her joints. Her head throbs and her back throbs and her legs throb with the reminder of yeah, you're starving and injured, it's not better. She reels, convulsing. Her limbs feel heavy like her bones have been replaced with lead. She retches violently, but she's eaten so little nothing comes up, and Lucretia stays curled on the floor till she passes out again.

She can't move. The world passes around her, slowly, wavering. Her head hurts, but her other wounds feel numb, like she's a desert and the wind is blowing over her skin and stirring it away. She blinks a few times, her vision refusing to fully focus on the walls across from her, or the floor, stained dark in places with her own blood.

When she can focus a little better, Lucretia pushes herself to her knees. It's an effort to drag herself to her transcription wall. She's aware, somewhere in her mind, that whatever the normal belladonna regimen is, she's getting poisoned much faster than that. She wrote a bunch of unintelligible nonsense on day five. Must have been very high. She can't recall it.

Maybe she's getting the days wrong, anyway. Time passes like a fire for her, flickering with speed, jolting to a stop again, stretching, snapping. Nothing makes sense anymore.

She sticks her paintbrush into the cut she keeps open in her right thigh and rolls it around till it bleeds again. It's becoming more and more of a challenge to get actual red blood from those wounds, and she knows with an unhappy resignment that they're very thoroughly infected, but what can she do? When satisfied, she puts her brush to the wall again.

Day 6. That was fucking terrible.

She drops the pen on the floor. That's enough. Her hand is shaking too much to write anything more coherent, anyway. What hand was she using, anyway? Her right. She was leaning on her left. Is. Is leaning on her left.

Lucretia drags herself to the window and peers out. There are two moons in the sky. For some reason, this doesn't make sense. Why would there be two moons?

There's grass by the window. Driven less by logical thought than usual, Lucretia darts out a hand, rips off a handful, and stuffs it in her mouth.

It's honestly the best thing she's ever eaten. (Sorry, Taako.)

She chews on a maple leaf while her mind thinks about Taako's smile, about the way he would act utterly affronted by the fact that random leaves off the ground taste like heaven to her, but wouldn't really mean it.

She tries to remember what his cooking tastes like. Tries to remember Lup's elderflower pancakes. Their stew and biscuits, the kind they make together, working around each other perfectly.

She can't.

The maple leaf is a little chewy. It tastes like the flavor wood should have more of. Kinda bitter.

She lets herself have a good cry.


	6. Chapter 6

“Come on, Ko. You've been doing the thing all cycle. What's up?”

“Death and self worth, mostly,” Taako says, in one of those calm moments of extreme honesty that come to him unexpected sometimes. He lets the heavy silence wash around him, Lup edging a little closer to him and sliding an arm around his waist. Barry looks distinctly uncomfortable, and sips at his cocoa to avoid addressing that.

Come to think of it, Taako wonders if it might have been better to ask Barry to leave the room. Oh well, Barry's gonna have to learn the true Taaco brand eventually.

“Oh, yeah.” Lup puts down her hot cocoa. “You know I love you, Taako.”

“Till death do us part,” he rasps, hiding his teary eyes behind his cocoa mug as he takes a big swallow. Barry somehow manages to look even more uncomfortable. Lup wraps her arms around Taako and puts her head on his shoulder.

It was there, unspoken: If you need to talk, I'm your girl, I've got you. And it's good, it's comfortable, it really is – Taako feels safe, leaning against his sister, listening to her breathe, feeling her torso expand and retract against his. It's good like nothing else is.

Taako lets the silence settle around them, lets the _safe_ and the _warm_ fill him up. He sips his hot cocoa till it's all gone and Barry's stopped looking uncomfortable long enough for Lup to yank him into the cuddle pile.

“You wanna help me find Lucy?”

Lup shifts. “What? Taako, she's gone.”

“I think that's. I mean that's fine. If she's alive I wanna yell at her and if she kicked it I don't want those chucklefucks burying her. Yanno.”

“How are we even supposed to find her, Taako?” Barry leans forward so he can see around his girlfriend.

Taako rolls his eyes. “Come on, Bluejeans, I thought you were a scientist. Trace her farspeech frequency? She did have it with her, right?”

“Y-yeah, she did, but there's no guarantee she still does--”

“So what? It'll give us somewhere to start. And I got that sneaky invisibility spell, so we can get past the walls if we're careful enough – and this place is elf-centric right? So me n lup got the upper hand, so, yeah.”

“Koko, we probably won't find her.”

“I don't care, Lu, I wanna try. And. The light is in there somewhere. If we can't find Lucy, we can nab that.”

“And if we don't get either?”

“Then at least we tried something,” Taako grumbles.

“I don't know, Taako.”

Taako pouts.

“Alright, FINE.” Barry slams his arms down on his legs. “We'll _try_. No guarantees. No guarantees about _anything_.”

“Oh don't worry,” Taako grins. “Everything works out for Taako.”

 

“Buttercups,” She says, again, to an empty room. The walls close in on her. Writhing with vines. With insects. With black glass, flecked with color.

“Shut up,” calls a voice from the other side of the wall. Lucretia laughs.

“Its a full moon,” she says. “High probability of Jason. And. There's two moons. I made one. It's mine. I'll save the world,” Lucretia giggles. “I'll save the world. I'm a _lunatic_!!”

“What the hell?”

“I, I can't,” She says. “They're dead, They're all dead, it's going to catch me, and then I'll be dead too,” The floor hits Lucretia's cheek unexpectedly. Okay. This is fine. Something caresses her skin. Pulls her against the wall. The vines, maybe? Was she against the wall before? Maybe? “It's gonna eat up your whole world. It's gonna _vore_ you.”

Muttering. Footsteps, moving away. Snakes rub against her skin, biting at her wrists, her ankles, the skin of her torso. They climb into the bites. They work their way between her muscles and her skin, they writhe. The pain is close, so close. She's in a desert. Her mouth is full of sand. She opens her mouth, and sand falls out. She rasps and chokes. Long ebony fingers rake at her tongue, at her teeth.

“Buttercups!” Lucretia convulses, choking. She dry heaves, curling in on herself, a pebble pressing into the skin of her shoulder. She gasps for air, and it doesn't come. Tears of pain and fear run down her face in little carved rivulets. She's sure her skin has been carved away, like the stone under a waterfall. She's falling, and falling, and the floor is hard and fast against her skin. It tingles. Her skin tingles. Her world flickers, and the Hunger is there again, pinpricks glowing with ghastly light, bright and violent and dangerous.

She needs good luck right now. She needs buttercups.

Her fingers dig into – the ground? The wall? She gasps. Magic. Magic. Cellulose – something-- she needs – She needs to breathe, she can't breathe, her heart is in her throat.

Her heart creates a bubble in her neck, threatening to burst, blocking her airways. Her head pounds and she goes limp against the floor, bones full of lead. Darkness slithers against the edges of her vision. It's probably the snakes under her skin. She still has snakes under her skin. They're turning into worms, into maggots, plucking her tendons like harp strings.

There's voices again, and this time they turn into a crowd, a million voices, and she cowers. Fingers grab her wrists. A thousand buzzing bees. She can hear the heartbeats of everyone in the room. Is she on a stage? Something hits her back, someone's yelling.

“What are buttercups? Who's going to eat us?”

“Good luck, Good luck,” She gasps. The hunger slithers in her vision. “Hunger.” She's so hungry. Snakes eat at her stomach. Snakes chew at her liver. Her face hits the wall as the person holding her wrists lets her go-- that was real, right? – she hits the ground. “Let me go,” she whimpers, into the floor, writhing with vines. Vines against skin. Snakes made of plants. Merle would be proud. Merle would be upset.

Lucretia despairs, because this is the end of her. She can't breathe. She can't make buttercups. She's gonna die. She's gonna die and no one cares about her everyone hates her and she writes and writes and maybe if she would forget it would be okay.

But it's not okay.

Nothing's okay.

 


	7. Chapter 7

Taako folds his legs up along the back of the lab table as Barry putters around the lab. He doesn't actually expect them to find Lucretia, but he, for once in his tiny purposeless fucking life, wants to try.

“Hah!” Barry says, suddenly, whatever spell he had been working on finally clicking together. “There! I found it!”

“What?” Taako doesn't bother unfolding himself, or even looking in Barry's direction. He can hear just fine from over here, thanks, and his body feels heavy and weighted.

“Her farspeech signal. It's in the middle of the kingdom, where I would assume the castle is. I'll do some triangulating with Lup. Uh. Would you make coffee?”

“I'm not your tea lady,” Taako grumbles, but he climbs down off the lab table and heads towards the door. His center of balance is a little off, and he sways for a moment before regaining equilibrium.

“No, but you're also not a scientist, and you _are_ the cook around here.”

Taako doesn't let it get to him. He doesn't. He heads down the hallway, tells Lup to go help Barry, and heads to the kitchen.

He doesn't make tea anything fancy. Puts the kettle on. Fetches the mug he knows Barry likes the best – it's old and brown and plain and starting to chip but it's from homeworld and looks homemade and Taako knows it's special – and two identical amber ones for him and Lup, because why not. He almost lets the kettle boil over onto the stove before jolting himself out of his thoughts and pouring the water into the teapot. He puts the ensemble on a tray and trudges back in the general direction of the lab.

Lup looks up as he enters. “Hey Ko, how're you doin?”

“Fine,” He says, putting the tray down on the table. Lup steps away from her project for a moment and walks in his direction.

“You don't look fine. You look spacey.” Her hands cup his face. He hadn't noticed how low his ears were hanging till her fingers pushed them up and out of the way.

“Lu, babe, I'll be okay. Just gotta catch other Lu, yea? Gotta make sure she's okay. Cause I got a bad feeling.”

“Taako you always have a bad feeling,” Lup laughs. She pours herself and Barry cups of tea and heads back to her work. Taako helps himself to a cup as well, and climbs on top of the lab tables again so he can watch them work.

This is his family. These people, these total nerds he's found in the thickets of his life, they're all he has left. Taako puts his head on his knees and lets Lup's plans for their infiltration wash over him.

He misses Lucretia, though he would never admit it to someone's face. He wants her back because he misses her. They've already lost Magnus this cycle, and Taako's been having nightmares, and he just does not want to be alone. He doesn't want to imagine Lucretia alone, stuck in some horrible place within the city limits, either. A castle dungeon, maybe? Or maybe the tower at the top of the building. _Maybe she's dead_ , he considers, but chases the thought away. He has to believe she's alive for the sake of his own sanity.

 

They set out towards the city the next evening, right around when a human might go to bed and a few hours before the hours of the night when elves wander. It seems like the perfect time to set out, since most everyone in the city ought to be asleep. They work their way along the perimeter, watch the guard cycle for a little while, and creep their way to the gate.

With a wave of his wand, Taako turns the gate into a few loaves of bread, ushers Lup and Barry through, and changes it back. Lup casts invisibility, and they work their way through the streets, soft and quick as shadows. Its surprisingly easy to reach the castle gates, but getting in immediately becomes an issue.

“Did we plan this bit?” Barry hisses.

“We didn't exactly know what the goddamn fortress is like! Just the outer wall!!” Lup whispers back. “Any ideas, Taako?”

Taako stares up the wall – he can almost feel the light of creation behind the masonry. It calls to him. He shakes himself and runs a hand along the wall. “Window?”

“Is there a window?”

Taako points. There's a window. It's a little high, but he can climb fairly well. It's a skill that became necessary in their childhood.

“Okay, okay, I get that you two are fucking flip wizards, but how am _I_ supposed to get up there?”

“You're the only one who hasn't used a spell slot yet, babe,” Lup reminds.

They scale the wall, Barry grumbling behind them as he wastes a spell slot to reach windowframe. Taako breaks the window with one fist, making the loudest noise the three of them had heard in the past hour, and Lup almost falls off the wall before her brother's holding out a bloody arm, helping her through the gap.

Taako turns to examine the room, and finds two stunned guards staring at him. Taako grins with all his teeth and knocks them out. One of them manages to avoid his spell but his foot follows after and then they land on the floor next to their comrade.

“There it is,” Taako says, pointing to the desk. A plain blue stone is resting on top of it. “Her stone.”

 

Lucretia shivers. She's been experiencing a cold sweat since she woke up that afternoon, and it frankly sucks balls. Her stomach stopped growling days ago (uncountable days, because fuck knows how long she's been here, or how long it will take for her to just die, to just die already she just wants to be back with her friends, alive, safe, okay – ) and now it just aches, steady and slow, her own body devouring itself for lack of sustenance. And now she has seven belladonna berries and a pitcher of water in front of her, and she knows this time, there's no way she'll survive.

She knows she has to eat the berries or she'll be hit. She knows she can't handle that. And then she has an idea-- because there's a treatment for Belladonna poisoning, if you work fast enough. One can survive belladonna poisoning if they take an emetic not long after eating the berries. And she knows an emetic. An emetic she's created before, with her own two hands (and Taako's help). She has to do it on her own this time, that's the only catch.

She'd been delirious last time she did this, but she'd also been _on_ to something. 

She digs her fingers into the floor, tries to imagine the dirt and blood caked under her fingers might become a flower.

Buttercups. Buttercups.

_How can poison be good luck?_

Lucretia begs for buttercups, calling on her magic. Nothing happens the first time. Nothing happens the second time. A sob works its way through her body, and she curls up even smaller. It's hopeless.

Then she has another idea.

Lucretia reaches inside of her, grabs hold of as much magical energy as she can spare without killing herself, and forces it through the floor.

Her vision whites out, and she shivers against the cold for a bit, feeling hollowed out like she's never felt before. However, after a few tense, breathy moments -- she's not sure if she's going to fall into unconsciousness or resurface enough to see the results -- her vision clears. A buttercup is less than an inch from her nose.

Lucretia inhales- it worked, _it worked_ \- and tries to sit up, too fast, her vision goes again. Luckily, she's right next to the wall, and she can lean back while she regains her senses.

Now. How to do this.

Lucretia picks a handful of buttercups. She picks some more, because better safe than sorry. She has no idea how much she'll need. She puts them in the cup that's supposed to be for water. It takes her a while, weak as she is, to gather everything she wants together.

She doesn't even know if this will work. She doesn't know every chemical element in buttercups. She's winging it.

This is going to be horrible. That she knows. Her body is weakened down to last resort level already. The difference between this and just eating the damn deadly nightshade straight is that she might, key word _might_ survive. The risk is there, and it's huge.

She knocks back all seven belladonna berries, waits thirty seconds, and starts eating buttercup flowers.

Buttercups are _disgusting_.

She keeps eating them. That means she must have gotten something about the chemical makeup right.

She finishes eating the entire cupful of buttercups before the nausea she was already experiencing intensifies. She convulses, and the disgusting taste of buttercups comes back to her mouth, mixed with bile. It hurts with an intensity. In the past few days, she hasn't seen much of pain, because pain has been replaced with numbness, but this she feels. She wants to just collapse but she forces herself to stay on her hands and knees, so she doesn't choke on her own puke.

It feels like an hour before her body stops shuddering. She waits as long as she dares before deciding it's done, and makes herself sit back against the wall, instead of collapsing forward into the mess on the floor.

She hears the door open and realizes there's not much explaining she can do here. The guard glances between her and the buttercup plants growing all over the room. She tries to speak for a moment and then gives up because fuck it, fuck it. A rasping noise manages to work its way out of her throat.

The guard looks completely lost. It's almost definitely a situation they've never had to deal with before. Finally, they just shut the door again, and leaves her alone.

Lucretia pours herself a glass of water with shaking hands and drinks it as slowly as she can make herself. If she has to be starving, at least she can be hydrated. _You're supposed to drink after you throw up, right? That's a thing, right?_

She manages to finish the whole pitcher of water and still wants more.

She doesn't let herself fall asleep, but she's close to delirious anyway, so she might as well have.

 

They reach a stairway. One set goes up, the other down. Barry makes a decision.

“I'm gonna find the light,” He says.

Lup looks surprised, but okay. Taako looks worried.

“Come back in one piece, okay babe?” Lup says, giving him a kiss on the cheek.

“Of course,” He says. He turns up the stairs.

There's not much to see for a bit-- he can feel the pull of the light, still calling him up the stairs rather than into any of the rooms he passes. He's quiet as he can be, especially once the invisibility spell wears off (that's going to be a problem, isn't it?) at about the third floor. This place can't be much more than five stories, can it? He hopes not. That would be bullshit.

The light, it turns out, is in a tower at the very top of the building, guarded. Has no one used it? Barry spends a moment thinking about the fact that _no one in this godsforsaken city has used the light of creation the entire time it's been here_ before coming to his senses as a guard hurls his ax past his head and down the stairs. Oh yeah. He's standing in front of some guards.

Barry gets all ready to fight the fuckers with one of his close combat weapons and realizes he came mostly unarmed in the same moment, so he just rushes them. One of the guards manages to get their arms around his chest, but the other is right in front of him so he kicks his legs up and hits that guy in the stomach. They make a noise and fall on the ground.

He's still in the other person's arms though, and it's not pleasant as the arms work their way higher than his chest and towards his throat. He kicks a leg behind him and jams his heel into their crotch, which gives him just enough time to break free of the hold they have on him and shove them into the wall. He pulls his fist back and punches them in the throat, then turns around, hitting the first guy in the ribcage with his boot. He hears bones crack.

Satisfied, Barry kicks down the door to the room, which is surprisingly fragile, and stumbles into the room containing the light.

He's shocked for a moment to find there's another person in this room – not because the person is there, but because they're tall, elven, and look strikingly like Taako.

It takes Barry a moment to collect himself, to note the differences in face shape (let alone _clothing_ ) before he can do anything about it. And while he's gathering his wits, the elf has grabbed the light and started rushing towards him. Barry almost lets them barrel right into him and out of the room before seizing the back of their robe and slamming their head into the wall. They drop the light. Barry picks it up.

They're going to have to fly the ship _far away_ when all this is over.

Barry shoves the light under his arm and kicks his way back down the stairs. He slams some doors in people's faces, too, which is extremely satisfying. When he reaches the ground floor, he doesn't stop to consider Taako and Lup-- they can handle themselves, and maybe if he rushes quickly from the kingdom he'll draw attention away from them. An escaped prisoner is surely less relevant to these people than the light of creation.

Shit. He probably bashed the king's head into the wall.

Barry laughs out loud.

 

She's hallucinating. Maybe it didn't do anything. Taako and Lup are there again, in front of her. Warm fingers on her skin, cupping her cheek.

“D'you think she's conscious?” a voice says. Lup's voice.

“Iunno. Her eyes are moving, I think so. But shes super not okay. Fuck, Lup, we found her, but I dunno if she's gonna make it.” A pause. Something shakes her shoulder. “Hey. Lucy. Ya in there?”

She manages a groan that wants to turn into a sob, because she hurts a lot in a lot of places and it sucks wholesale ass. She wants the hallucinations to stop, go away, let her die in relative peace. She's had enough hallucinations. It's not her fault she didn't manage to get all the belladonna out of her system.

“Sounds like she's at least somewhat aware,” says the second voice. The Lup voice. Haha, loopy. Not funny. Who cares, she's dying.

This hallucination feels extremely real, though, when someone slips their arms under her and picks her up. “Woah, she's deffos lost some weight,” she hears.

“Poor kid.”

The sensation of being carried makes her stomach churn, and the arm behind her back makes her wounds sting. She makes a noise of pain and curls her fingers into the person's shirt, which is more solid and real than any of the previous specters had been.

She doesn't want to believe that this is real, because she doesn't want to get her hopes up. So she closes her eyes and presses her face into the warm chest of – whomever – and lets the sensation of being held ground her a little in the present. She's not allowed to sleep. She's too likely to die.

She feels the outside air around her, and takes a deep breath. It smells like grass and earth and maple. It's nice. The body she's pressed against is warm, and despite the aches, she's happy this is what she imagined as her last dream. She think she might be crying. She doesn't want to die.

“Hey, Lucy, it's okay, I gotcha.”

She nods.

A third hand runs its fingers though her hair. Did she dream up an apparition with three hands? It feels familiar.

“GUYS! Guys! I got it! Comeonwegottagetouttahere--”

“Ya got it! Oh shit!” the bouncing sensation intensifies, and Lucretia shudders as pain courses through her body.

“Shit wow, she was actually alive!” the new person pants. “Is she gonna be okay?”

“I dunno mango, I don't even know if she's awake right now.”

Every time they hit the ground her back hurts a little more. She closes her eyes and doesn't open them.

The sound of the ground changes, and then there's a door sound, and then more of the footfalls on metal.

“Hey Dav-- we got the light--”

“What the hell were you three doing?”

“Less talking, more getting us outta here, Cap. Ur the pilot around here, and Bluejeans miiiight have a buncha guards chasing him. Us. Come on.”

“I may have smashed the king's head into a wall,”

“Gods almighty,” the voice drips with sarcasm.

More movement. Not running this time. Walking. Walking on metal. Why is metal familiar.

“Oh shit, you actually got her back!” A pause. Lucretia feels herself deposited on some flat surface. “Is she alive?”

“Yea, I think so.”

“Conscious?”

“Hard ta say.”

Someone lays their hand on her chest. It's a big, broad hand with a familiar weight to it. Warmth spreads through her limbs.

The last thread of effort keeping her awake snaps, and everything fades away.


	8. Chapter 8

Lucretia wakes up somewhere warm, and the first thing she thinks is _Oh. I died._ She wallows in this information. That's fine. She was never particularly useful anyway. The world swirls in silence and darkness. Distantly, she hears a hum, soft and familiar, lulling her towards sleep.

She shifts, and pain lights up in her back and her legs, that achey soreness one feels when they've been mostly healed. Not dead, then. Her head aches, and she's aware suddenly that she's starving and thirsty and nothing feels okay anymore. Then she remembers the whole debacle with resurrection and no, she can't have possibly died, because she would be on the deck of the ship again. She would be back on the deck of the ship surrounded by the people she loves and she wouldn't feel like throwing up and passing out and crying all at once. Or maybe she would. She did the first time the bond engine had dragged them through the continuum. That's a statistical outlier, though, because her entire homeworld had just been destroyed when that happened.

Lucretia groans.

“Oh hey! Lucy! You there?”

She opens her eyes. There's a ceiling. It's metal. Some hair. Blonde. She blinks a few times. This is distinctly _not_ the same place she's been waking up for the past indeterminate amount of time, but she can't recall why.

“Can you speak?”

No. She doesn't think so.

Her vision is blurry and weird and the person puts an arm under her anyway, trying to get her to sit up. Everything pitches and rolls, but there's pillows under her, and okay, she can sit apparently, she wasn't expecting that.

“Hey, sorry, Merle said you should eat something if ya woke up. I made some soup broth. I thought that'd be okay, it's kinda cold now, but I figure cold soup broth is better than nothing.”

She nods, still not entirely aware of what's going on. Something cold touches her lips and she opens her mouth. It tastes like meat, which feels foreign. She swallows. It does something to help with her thirst, and not much to sate her hunger. She needs more. She doesn't have the strength in her to raise a hand for the container, but she makes a squeaking noise. 

“Okay.” someone sighs. The metal leaves her mouth and she hears a click. “You can sleep if you feel like it,” they say. It sounds hollow.

Lucretia heeds this. She's tired.

 

The next time Lucretia wakes up she's in substantially less pain. She blinks sleep from her eyes, pushes herself up on her elbows. She's in the infirmary, of course, a little two bed place. She's thirsty, but she doesn't feel like she's dying. And, and, there's a pitcher of water by her bed. For a second, she panics, but then she takes a deep breath. She's in the _ship_. Right? Right?

Lucretia pours herself a glass of water and sips it, glancing around. It still looks like the ship. She just woke up, so she can't be hallucinating, can she? It's fine, it's real.

Lucretia sits there, feeling on the edge between imagination and reality, for a while. An indeterminate amount of time. She stares at her sheets, praying that they're real.

“Oh hey!”

Lucretia looks towards the noise-- moving her head too fast makes it spin for a moment, but then she sees Lup, standing in the doorway.

“You're awake!”

“Hi,” Lucretia says. Her voice sounds like a metal hairbrush on a chalkboard and hurts just as much. She winces.

“I'll be right back, 'kay?” Lup leaves. The emptiness in Lucretia's heart intensifies and she panics for a moment. _No, don't go_.

She fights with the sensation the whole time Lup's away, but, true to her word, Lup returns. She comes back with a bowl full of soup and Barry and Taako and Merle and Lucretia chokes because she's going to cry, it hurts so bad.

“Where's Davenport?”

“We're flying,” Barry says. “He's at the helm right now.”

The relief is tangible. “Magnus?”

“Oh he died, homie,” Taako says.

“Oh.”

She supposes he looked pretty dead in that cave. He dies a lot. The most, so far. 

She accepts the soup. Okay. Okay. Lucretia versus one bowl of soup. It's on one of those trays designed to sit on a bed, which makes it a lot easier to eat it despite her shaking hands.

Lucretia manages both to eat the whole bowl of soup and not to eat it too fast, despite how agonizingly hungry she is. Taako takes the tray back from her when she's done. She feels vaguely sick. Alright. Okay. She's fine. She leans against the nearest form, which just happens to be Barry. He's real and physical and there. It's really really nice.

“Didn't expect to get you back this cycle,” Merle says.

“Didn't expect to be back,” she replies.

Barry seems completely unsure on what to do about Lucretia's head on his chest. She makes a tugging motion and he sits on the bed.

“Woah.” Barry laughs a little.

“Mnph,” Lucretia hugs him. A whole entire human in her arms. A whole, real human in her arms. She feels wibbly.

“You okay, creesh?” The bed dips on the other side.

“Mm.” She squeezes Barry a little and shifts so there's more room on the bed.

Taako seems to get the hint, draping his whole physical form across her. It's very good. It's extremely good. They're so warm.

Lup sits down somewhere else, and another set of arms wraps its way around her waist. The physical contact feels so good, and she's warmed to the bone.

They sit there, comfortable and peaceful, for a good while. Lucretia listens to their heartbeats. Their breathing. It relaxes her. In fact, she opts not to move till her stomach growls again, and it's time to get up and head to the kitchen for something to eat-- maybe more of that soup.

“How you feeling?”

“Better,” Lucretia decides. “I missed you guys.” She can feel her energy sapping, probably because she's lacked sustenance for a while.

“Missed ya too,” Taako says.

She eats two bowls of soup while Taako tells her about what happened while she was gone. She wishes she had been there, because it sounds like Taako's been raked raw over this goddamn plane, and it sucks balls.

“Hey,” she decides, when she's eaten her fill. “In a few years, we'll be reminiscing about this one. The year they made me eat poison.”

“Yea,” Taako agrees. “Yeah.”

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> aaaaaand this deffos wont be back to bite lucretia or taako at any point in the future, nope. Especially not taako. Never gonna feed anyone their deaths. Ever. Nope not at all

**Author's Note:**

> Other various commentary:  
> Buttercups has been in progress since _before_ I started writing no halo, which means it didn't explicitly fit in that universe when I started writing. However, I don't know if there will be allusions to no halo or not, because immortal!lucretia has become pretty much my only headcanon for her.  
>  Yes, this fic is rated M. Yes, it's on my main pseud. Please proceed with caution. I'll put warnings on chapters with sexual content or dubious consent. I've seen people use (*) in front of paragraphs containing pretty harsh stuff, but if you've read my work before you know I don't really put warnings on individual units of content so just... take care of urself, ok? If you can't read this fic, that's fine. Not all content is gonna work out for everyone.


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